


If You're Reading This... (I'm Not Safe)

by kitkatt0430



Series: Hartmon Bingo 2020 [19]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Cisco doesn't need powers to be a hero, Gen, Hartley being sneaky, Mystery, following the clues, missing person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:42:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26709205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitkatt0430/pseuds/kitkatt0430
Summary: Some might say that the story started almost fifteen years ago when the Reverse Flash murdered Nora Allen in a fit of rage after being denied the chance to kill her son.  Others might say it started centuries in the future when Eobard Thawne's artificial Speed Force was created with an unexpected flaw that warped his personality until he became unrecognizable.  Hartley would say it began the night he discovered the flaws in the accelerator and the boss he had a crush on broke his heart and crushed his career all in one fell swoop.But this isn't Barry's story or Eobard's story or even Hartley's story.  Though all their stories are relevant, one way or another.This is Cisco's story.  And for him... for him it began on a dark and stormy night when he tripped over a package left at the front door of his apartment.
Relationships: Cisco Ramon & Hartley Rathaway
Series: Hartmon Bingo 2020 [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1656343
Comments: 7
Kudos: 18





	If You're Reading This... (I'm Not Safe)

**Author's Note:**

> For Hartmon Bingo prompt B1 - Following the clues

Some might say that the story started almost fifteen years ago when the Reverse Flash murdered Nora Allen in a fit of rage after being denied the chance to kill her son. Others might say it started centuries in the future when Eobard Thawne's artificial Speed Force was created with an unexpected flaw that warped his personality until he became unrecognizable. Hartley would say it began the night he discovered the flaws in the accelerator and the boss he had a crush on broke his heart and crushed his career all in one fell swoop.

But this isn't Barry's story or Eobard's story or even Hartley's story. Though all their stories are relevant, one way or another.

This is Cisco's story. And for him... for him it began on a dark and stormy night when he tripped over a package left at the front door of his apartment.

He nearly crashes face first into the door when his foot slips, but Cisco manages to right himself at the last minute, though one of his palms stings from smacking into the door in order to do so. Better his hand than his nose, though. He still waits a few moments, though, for his heart to stop pounding. And then he finally bends down to pick up the thing that nearly ruined his whole evening.

It's a package, which is odd. Usually anything that didn't fit in his mailbox would get delivered to the main office. There were a few enterprising UPS and FedEx delivery guys who'd come to the actual apartment door instead, but mostly the packages were dropped off with Susan, Mallory, or Mark, depending on the time of day and who was on duty at the time.

Whatever it is, the package is slim and Cisco's a bit concerned he may have broken whatever it is. There's no return address, but the package is clearly marked with Cisco's full name and address for delivery purposes. So he unlocks his door and as he walks inside his apartment, Cisco pulls off the packaging.

Inside is a dvd-rom inside a protective case and a folded up letter. The disc is marked 'WATCH ME' and Cisco sets that aside. He's not watching that until he's read the letter. And even then it might still go in the trash. But there's something familiar about the all caps writing, even though it's done in thick, black, permanent marker, which always warps a person's handwriting to at least some degree.

The letter is also hand written and the hand that wrote it more easily discerned. It had been months, but there was no forgetting Hartley's spiky semi-cursive handwriting. Even if Cisco wished he could.

He sets the letter aside without reading it and goes to start cooking dinner. It's only once Cisco's settled down on the couch again with food that he picks the letter back up and reads what's there.

_Cisco,_

_I know I'm the last person you want to hear from and if I thought I had any other choice, I'd be going to someone else for help. But the fact is that if you're reading this? I'm in a lot trouble and someone else needs to know the truth._

A chill crawls over Cisco's shoulders as lightning flashes outside his window follow almost instantly by the loud crash of thunder. It's an ominous word choice on Hartley's part and Cisco's tempted to set the letter aside again.

He doesn't, though. He keeps reading.

_I don't know what Harrison told everyone else about my departure from STAR Labs. I was fired. Not for bad behavior, though in retrospect that would have been deserved. No, I was fired for what I found in the pipeline. It was flawed and the explosion the night it was activated was inevitable. When I confronted Harrison about it, he fired me to cover up the flaw. I'd hoped that maybe I was wrong or that maybe Harrison would have an attack of conscience and post pone the accelerator's activation. Obviously, however, neither of those things came to pass._

_I would have loved to have been wrong, just this once. Ronnie deserved better._

_I should have come forward, but at the time... Harrison had threatened me and I was genuinely afraid of him. To be honest... I still am. I know you probably don't believe any of this, but if you watch the dvd I sent with this letter... it'll give you a reason to at least consider I'm telling the truth. Because the accelerator isn't the only lie he's telling._

_Hartley Rathaway_

Underneath Hartley's name was scrawled a series of numbers and a circle with a second, smaller circle inside. The words 'start from 0 - right 12 - left 360° degrees plus 14 - right 25' written around the outside of the inner circle.

The letter and the dvd were both unceremoniously dumped in the trash. That could've been the end of it. That should've been the end of it.

But Cisco barely made it halfway through his dinner before curiosity finally got to him.

The letter and the dvd were fished out of the trash and the dvd dropped into an old laptop of Cisco's, one that he'd reformatted with a niche linux distro that he'd meant to play around with back in December but couldn't even remember the name of now. It'd run VLC player, though, which ought to be able to handle whatever video codec Hartley'd used to burn a video to the disc.

There's only one file on the disc and Cisco clicks on it with great reluctance. 

It's a somewhat grainy cell phone video of someone's house. Someone with expensive, modern, and... if Cisco's being honest, and a bit judgy, kind of boring taste. There's a huge window wall to the living room and absolutely no privacy what-so-ever. Cisco probably should have guessed it was Dr. Wells' house based on Hartley's little poison pen missive, but... it's still a surprise to see Dr. Wells roll into view on his wheelchair.

Of course, that's not the real shocker on the video. No... that's when Dr. Wells locks the wheels on the chair, stretches his legs, and then stands up to walk over to the kitchen.

He's not paralyzed. 

* * *

Cisco spends the rest of the night trying to rationalize away the video. It's probably doctored somehow. It's not real.

It can't be real. Except that it is.

In the early hours of the morning, Cisco finally accepts the paradigm shift, the upheaval of everything he thought he knew and believed to be true about Dr. Wells. Because if he's faking the paralysis, then what else is he lying about? And what could he possibly hope to gain from it?

Feigning disability is generally more effort than it's worth, as far as Cisco could tell anyway. Something relegated to one of the many cop dramas that over-saturated the many television channels out there, always with at least a hint - if not a heaping helping - of self-righteous ableism to go with it. So he's not exactly pleased to find the trope being acted out in real life, by his own boss.

But Cisco can't sleep now, not knowing what he does now, and he's brimming with angry energy. He has no idea what to do with this, though he suspects he ought to take the letter and dvd to the police.

So he tries to figure out what the numbers at the bottom of the letter mean. They're not phone numbers, so that means Hartley didn't leave Cisco any way to contact him. And the circle-in-a-circle thing had to be a combination lock key. But why give Cisco the combo to a lock and then not... tell him... where it was...

Cisco tried entering the numbers into a GPS locator. Latitude and longitude. And bingo. The location resolved to an old warehouse in Central City. 

It was too early for Cisco to be willing to risk being out in that part of town, so he finally went to sleep and woke up feeling poorly rested. The last thing he wanted to was to go into work, to see Dr. Wells in his wheelchair when he knew the older man didn't need it. So Cisco called in sick. Said he had a cold, affecting a nasally tone easily enough. Being tired from barely sleeping worked in his favor. Dr. Wells gave him the time off easily and even told him to take Friday too.

After hanging up, Cisco felt a little guilty because... what if the video was fake after all?

But two cups of coffee later and Cisco was feeling more alert. So he took an uber to the warehouse district and walked the rest of the way to the one Hartley's letter had indicated. The building was abandoned, but there was evidence someone had been squatting in it for some time. And hidden beneath a ratty looking green sleeping bag, Cisco found a small fire safe with a basic combination lock on it. Cisco spun the lock around three times to stop at zero, feeling like he was back in high school opening up his old locker. From 0 the lock turn right to the number 12, then he carefully turned it to the left all the way back to 12. Then left backwards fourteen clicks to land on 38. And then Cisco hesitated. Was the next number twenty five clicks to the right or the actual number 25?

And that made him concerned he'd gotten the wrong number for the middle number. Was the middle number actually 26?

Cisco sighed. It wasn't like he couldn't try again if the first combination attempt failed. He twisted the knob to 23. And the box clicked open.

Inside the safe was a pair of gloves unlike anything Cisco had ever seen before. Delicate wiring climbed the arms up to the tips of the fingers alongside led lighting. Cisco turned first one, then the other, over in his hands. He wasn't sure what the tech was for, so he didn't dare switch it on. But... Hartley made these. Cisco had no doubt they were amazing, whatever they were. Hartley might be an asshole, but the quality and brilliance of his work couldn't exactly be denied.

Setting aside the gloves, Cisco pulled out a small container next. Hearing aids were inside, but they looked a lot bulkier in the section that was meant to curve behind the ear than the ones Armando used. Those were unobtrusive and could be difficult to even see when he had them in. These were... not unobtrusive. Cisco closed the box and set it aside.

Next out of the safe were two thick folders. Cisco flipped the top one open and on top of what looked like specs for the gloves was another letter addressed to him.

Swallowing hard, Cisco opened the envelope and opened the letter.

_Cisco,_

_The gloves and the hearing aids are my own inventions. After the accelerator dumped dark energy all over the city, I was... hurt. My hearing was damaged by that energy. Which probably sounds like I've jumped on the tin hat brigade and I can't really blame you if you think that._

_My hearing was enhanced, not reduced. The world blotted out by a combination of tinnitus and being able to hear everything for what feels like a least a mile, if not more. I developed my own hearing aids and the specs for them are in the other file. I don't know how familiar you are with hearing aids, but you'll see for yourself that the specs - and my backup aids - are sound dampeners instead of amplifiers. The gloves, however, are one of a kind. Vibration based weaponry._

_It's almost a shame I'll never have a chance to use them. They were fun to make and more fun to test._

_I wasn't the only one affected by the accelerator that night, though. That comatose guy Harrison brought to STAR Labs is just the tip of the iceberg. You need to check out STAR Labs exterior CCTV cameras from that night. You might find something very interesting on camera 3C's recording. Once you've done that, look into the FIRESTORM project run by Professor Martin Stein._

_Don't trust Harrison with any of this. I don't know what he's up to and originally I was planning on exposing the truth about the accelerator and his prior knowledge of the inevitable explosion. But I saw something the night the accelerator blew. And when followed that up... I found something that I couldn't just let go. And I think I may have kicked over the wrong rock trying to look into it. You weren't there for Harrison's joint project with General Eiling, but Eiling is... frighteningly unethical. A real General Ross vs The Hulk type._

_I wouldn't have reached out to you if it was just about me. But its about a lot more than that now, Cisco. And I'm trusting your judgement on this._

~~_There are some documents_ ~~

_There were some documents hidden in my old office that might be used to prove the accelerator was flawed before the explosion. I don't want to say where they are exactly, just in case. But I'm sure you can find them if they're still there._

_I'm putting you in a lot of danger, Cisco. And I can't apologize enough for that._

_Be careful. More careful than I've been, anyway._

_Hartley_

There were time stamps at the bottom, presumably time codes for the CCTV recording. And a sketch of a flower, more stylized doodle than anything. It put Cisco in mind of a painting that Hartley'd kept in his office. It... was probably still there.

Cisco had brought a backpack with him, on the assumption there'd be something in the safe to bring back with him. So now he started filling it up with the folders, the hearing aids, and the gloves.

What the hell even was all of this? None of it made any sense. Enhanced hearing, FIRESTORM... Barry Allen's coma.

Except... Hartley had a point. Allen's coma was... weird. The rapid healing from the IV needles, the seizures that made his heart race so fast it couldn't be tracked... a speed that should've made his heart explode, yet Caitlin's tests indicated his heart had never been healthier. His muscles weren't even atrophying from disuse. 

There were copies of the STAR Labs camera recordings in police custody. Cisco could go to Allen's foster father. Detective... Joseph West, Cisco thought that was his name anyway. But what could he say that would convince the detective to let him take a look? Besides... STAR Labs still had the original recordings on their servers. They should anyway. No reason Cisco couldn't check it out on his own... just to see for himself.

He could review all the cameras. So if Dr. Wells noticed and asked about it... Cisco could say he just... had unanswered questions about the night. About Ronnie's death. He just... needed to put his memories of that night to rest. Of course... that would mean watching the video of himself closing the door on Ronnie, locking him in the pipeline. Caitlin... Caitlin didn't know about that and Cisco didn't think he could watch that again.

Whatever. Cisco could figure out how to access the camera recording later. For now he could look into FIRESTORM. Find out what Professor Stein had to do with the accelerator and General Eiling. And check Hartley's old office for that proof about the accelerator's flaws. 

And maybe he could find out what happened to Hartley along the way. Hopefully he wasn't in as much danger as it sounded like.

Hopefully Cisco wasn't about to be kicking over a wasp nest.


End file.
